承诺 / 价值链重构 Commitment/Value Chain Reconfiguration

This is a Chinese version of Competitive Strategy. You can find the original course in English from our course catalog.
此版本是Coursera首次尝试推出的中文翻译版。课程视频为英文原版附中文字幕，课程页面和测验已译成中文，帮助中心提供中文支持。
在本课程（共六个模块）中，你将了解企业在战略决策相互依存的情况下如何行事。例如，你的行动会如何影响竞争对手的利润，反之亦然。我们将会借助博弈论的基本工具分析企业如何选择策略以获得竞争优势。

教学方

Tobias Kretschmer

Professor

脚本

So welcome back to the next video lecture. We've just looked at the determinants to consider when searching for a market to enter. So imagine now, you've found an attractive industry with high profits and fairly low entry barriers. And the question you're going to ask yourself now is how should I enter this industry? There are a number of possible strategies, of which we're going to discuss four in the next two videos. But let's first have a look at where we are in the process. We first determined if we have the capacity to enter a new market in the first place. We then looked at the choice of markets so, that is determined by the attractiveness and the entry barriers. We then chose the entry type and now, we want to devise an entry strategy. And so let's now look at two, we'll look at commitment strategies and value chain reconfiguration as we'll see in a second. So what's a commitment strategy to enter? A commitment strategy is a credible commitment by the entrant to stay in the market to stop incumbents from retaliating. So what could this be? This could be investments for example that are high that are costly and that are sunk. What do we mean by sunk? Sunk cost investement is an investment that you make and that's only usefuly for one particular activity. So if you wanted to exit the market again, it would just not be particularly useful. Okay, so you would lose a lot of your investment if you exited the market again. What are these? Production capacity. So if you build a plant specifically for one product, that's going to mean that it's sunk because you can't use it for anything else. If you do R&D for one particular market segment that's again going to be sunk because you can't use the knowledge that you gained for anything else. Advertising into one brand that cannot be used that cannot be redirected if you wish for another market is again a high sunk cost investment. And that can serve as a commitment by an entrant that he is in the market to stay. Another strong commitment would be simply to exit from other strategic market segments and just focus on the one that you are currently entering. So what happens here? Well if you exit from everything else then this is the only activity that you're currently doing, which means that if you lose that then you're not in the business any more. So it sort of becomes the only reason for that firm to exist and that of course means that you are committed to that particular activity. Let's now look at a commitment strategy using an example that we already know. And that's the market entry of Deutsche BA into the German domestic airline market. Again recall, that Deutsche BA could either enter or not enter. If they don't enter, the game is over and nothing happens. If they enter, then Lufthansa can choose to retaliate or not retaliate. If they don't retaliate then the market is shared by Deutsche BA and Lufthansa. If Lufthansa does retaliate than Deutsche BA faces another choice of either exiting the market or staying in the market. So, let's have a look at what the pales are. And let's see how we can solve this game tree. Again, this is a game tree which we have to solve by backward induction. Backward induction means we look at the very end of this game. And this is the last decision of the game. That's Deutsche BA. If they've entered the market, if Lufthansa has decided to retaliate, Deutsche BA can choose to exit or to stay. If they exit, they make a profit of minus three, if they stay, they make profits of minus four. So, their best strategy, if they entered and Lufthansa retaliated, is to exit the market. Having said that or having solved that we then can look at Lufthansa's strategy. And Lufthansa can choose to not retaliate and make profits of four or to retaliate knowing that Deutsche BA is going to exit and get six. So, Lufthansa, if Deutsche BA has entered, have an incentive to retaliate. Now, Deutsche of BA is going to look at this situation and say well if I enter, Lufthansa is going to retaliate at which point I'm going to exit and I'm going to make minus 3. So if I don't enter nothing will happen and I make profits of zero. So the equilibrium of this model, the outcome of this model is going to be for Deutsche BA to not even enter, and Lufthansa to not have to do anything. So this is because Lufthansa can threaten or basically will retaliate because they know that retaliation will drive Deutsche BA out of the market again. So, let's see now what we can do. Deutsche BA can engage in the commitment strategy by investing in additional airplanes. So, they invest additionally in more planes to fly, which means it's a sunk cost investment because if they don't maintain, or if they don't exist in this market, if they don't exist in the local German market then all these investments, all these planes are sunk to some extent. They can only resell them, but they're only going to get a fraction of that money. So this changes the payoffs for Deutsche BA from minus three to minus five. Okay, why? Because if you exit, you're going to have to sell more planes, which means that you lose more money given that you've paid more for them from the start. So let's now have a look at what the outcome of this game is going to be. So, if you look here again solving the game by backward induction, we have Deutsche BA choosing to exit or to stay. If you exit, if Deutsche BA exits, they make profits of minus five, if they stay, they make profits of minus four. So now it's optimal for Deutsche BA to stay. What does that mean for Lufthansa? Given that if they retaliate, Deutsche BA are going to stay anyway, and Lufthansa would make profits of minus four, it's now better for them not to retaliate and reach profits of 4. So the best strategy here is to not retaliate. Now, Deutsche BA, will look at this and say, well if we don't enter, we're going to make profits of zero. If we do enter, we can make profits of four. So the outcome of this game is going to be that Deutsche BA enters and Lufthansa doesn't retaliate. And both firms make profits of four. So we were able to change the equilibrium, the outcome of the game, from this outcome to that outcome, by committing. So Deutsche BA actually did better by committing. And basically keeping the incumbent, keeping Lufthansa from retaliating. Another strategy to enter comes from reconfiguring the value chain that we currently observe in an industry. So innovators, in this case, will enter the market with a product that, interestingly, is inferior. So it's a worse product than what's currently out there on the market, but it's also a cheaper product. And offering a cheaper product of course means that you appeal to the more price-sensitive buyers. You are not attracting the buyers that currently buy from the incumbent. So that mainstream is not attracted by this new product because it's, it's worse, it's inferior. Which means that for the incumbent it's not a particularly threatening move. An incumbent doesn't feel like he has to do anything, because incumbents don't lose a particular great deal of business, it just doesn't matter. So over time this innovator, this firm that entered cheaply into the market will improve their own products and take large chunks of the market from the incumbents. And market leaders, the incumbents will find it difficult to respond because they cannot replicate the low cost business model that the entrant has been able to hone, to practice for a while while serving low value consumers or price sensitive buyers. Okay? So let's have a look at how this worked out using one example. Its the example of Bloomberg. So Bloomberg started in 1981 by providing basic financial data, not particularly deeply analyzed. Just basic financial data. And they served mainly small investment analysts and brokers. Now, these were not the mainstay consumers of Reuters or DOW Jones and so on. These were basically small investment analysts and brokers that could not afford the services that these mainstay firms were offering. So they were attracted by Bloomberg. However, over time, Bloomberg started improving their data offerings. They started improving their analysis. And eventually started taking large chunks of market share from Dow Jones and Reuters. So now, they're very much an established firm. They're very much a firm that is on an even keel with Dow Jones and Reuters. So now we've just looked at commitment strategies and value chain reconfiguration as ways of entering the market. There are two more following in the next video. So, for now, just stay on and I hope to see you back in a second.